Arriving late to the gig despite racing back from London (mainly due to accident on the M42) and having to reassemble the leads at the back of the TV and sky box following a carpet fitting (penance for a pass out) I had missed the Brum support act. The Slade rooms were packed with a very Moddish crowd raring to hear the Strypes, a band I had decided to come to see having listened to them interviewed on Cerys's show whilst walking down a beach in Barbados, not owning a jot by them, but knowing that they had put on a fantastic show. I had my head down whilst waiting for them, glued to my iPhone whilst the condensation ran down the walls in a sweaty Slade Rooms, a cheer and they were on, straight into a blistering opening, one of the loudest rawest rock n roll openings I have ever heard. It just sounded of a bygone age, exactly what I imagine the crowd packed in in Hamburg to see the Beatles would have heard, or in the States surrounding Chuck Berry or Jerry Lee Lewis (but without the running off with 14 year old cousin stigmas). I imagine its the sound of youth with an average age (if you believe wikipedia) of 15 and 16. It took a while to get used to a band who were comfortably young enough to be my kids, ironic as I will be heading to see in The Who a band who are old enough to be my parentstomorrow. The band looked cool too, lead singer with Blues Brothers shades propping up a fringe, whipping out an incredibly well used harmonica, bass player, looking like a cool Weasley Brother playing the bass like a man possessed (none of the barely moving coolness from Temples bassist here), lead guitar with boy band cool, matching suit jackets, shirt and matching pocket square and drummer (probably cool looking but hidden from my vantage point so I will give him the benefit of the doubt). The set was a mixture of covers and original material, all delivered at blistering pace, delivering banter between tracks. A brief journey to see whether there were Wolves fans in the audience got a muted response, followed but 'well i guess we've got a mixed audience in tonight, some football fans and some Wolves fans' these youngsters have confidence and decent music taste paying tribute to Slade and Dave Hill (rather than the usual Sir Nod). Covers such as Judge a book by its cover (Bo Diddley) and See See Rider, probably close to the Animals interpretation of it. And so an encore of Route 66 complete with McCartneyesq shouts and whoops from Twist and Shout and they were off after a frenetic hour of rock and roll. Off no doubt to a rider of pop and haribos, whilst the crowd with ears ringing were given free posters when they stepped outside the venue, I doubt Mrs P will let me put it up on my bedroom wall, but hey. The final thought that I was struck by when walking to the car, was that's what Marty McFly was looking for when he wigged out on stage at the end of Back To The Future, both the sound and the reaction from an ecstatic crowd. My favourite new band.......I think so far this week.
So an impulse purchase - driven by Songkick, the revolutionary website tempting me to gigs daily led me to the Slade Rooms tonight. This impulse was all centred around various dipping in and out of Buzzcocks tunes over the years, from hearing them on Radcliffe and Maconie on a fairly regular basis (11 appearances on the Chain and counting) to record fairs, bargain compilation CD's but realistically to one song - Ever Fallen in Love.
I would love to claim (at 7) that I had fallen in love with the song in the Punk days, but I came to the song in the eighties through the Fine Young Cannibals cover, who were a fine band with whom I had a brief obsession. Listening back to the song it sounds quite pedestrian now, distinctive vocals from Roland Gift, but nothing more. But the song had got into my DNA.
Not sure when Buzzcocks came to the surface, but this is the version of the song that I leap to first in my mind, clicks up a pace, raw emotional, heart breaking, reflecting on a situation of young love. Blistering 3 minutes and 54 seconds. This probably surfaced again radically when, having heard about John Peels death a rerelease was made of the song with a cracking video reflecting on what Peely had meant to countless generations of music lovers. Now I had not sat under the covers listening to John Peels show back in my adolescence, but later, when Indie came to my life at Uni, his programmes, with their friendly enthusiastic approach suddenly made huge amounts of sense, and his later championing of bands like Pulp, Blur and the White Stripes aligned him to my colours.
The fantastic video is as below:
So it was largely this song that got me to part with the £18.00 plus all manner of booking fees and charges and to head over to Wolverhampton again. I was buoyed by the news from twitter that Bleech were supporting and the timings that were announced which got me to Slade rooms bright and breezy, missing bedtime story time with my boy in the process. Sadly on reaching the Slade rooms it turned out that Twitter had exaggerated the show times by half an hour (so I could have relaxed) and also Bleech were not the band Bleeched (who have a cracking single out at the moment) but a more grungey band, although I found I did have an album of theirs on the ipod so it wasn't all a loss.
With half an hour to spare I reviewed the best merchandise stall I have seen in a long time, T Shirts, Totes, Vinyl, badges catering for the crowd. This was a good point because its rare in this day and age that I see a crowd that that looks so tribal, but here we definitely had a huge number of 'ageing punks' with a number of Mohicans one indeed a red dredd mohican!
The venue filled up, to what is probably the fullest I have seen it in this 550 capacity venue, in fact my ticket was number 460 so it can't have been much off its capacity. Bleech gave an entertaining show, a couple of memorable numbers. The lead singer, be-hatted was pretty impressive, twirling her guitar with all enthusiastic rock posturing but then noticing the tiny hands producing the noise was a bit odd. The Drummer centre stage gave a good impression of Andrew WK with his moshing head action and stand out moment was in the final song 'Mondays' when getting to the end the lead singer screamed out 'Who's out there' to the silent audience (silent I believe due to the intensity rather than apathy, as everyone wasn't chatting) only for one wag to say pardon, another to say in broad yorkshire accent go on lass, to which a big beam broke across the face of Bleech and she came enthusiastically to an end of the set.
Listening back to the album nude now - its not a bad listen at all, I will have to revisit this one, must have passed me by at the time.
Another half an hour, refilled redstripe, accompanied by some of the most enthusiastic drumming checking of equipment. On shuffled the band, Pete Shelley in yellow sloganeered shirt, untucked around a medicine ball of a stomach. Steve Diggle tall with mod haircut, bright blue shirt and grey slacks. They were a band that looked chuffed to be there, heading off into a set with Boredom, Pete leading, which captured the crowd straight away, a crowd in the hottest venue in the UK at the moment. I had forgotten what heat felt like this winter/spring. Shortly after this came Autonomy, lead duties over to Diggle, enthusiasm ensued, whirling Who guitar arms and big beaming face (I did get quite a lot of Phil Tuffnell look alike vibes). That was the order of the gig, no banter, blistering tune after tune, band loved by audience, providing the songs that were desired. An hour later they wandered off, much applause, wandered back finishing with 4 songs, the last 3 being 'Ever Fallen in Love' which fulfilled my ambition, Orgasm Addict and Oh Shit!
At the end, the band didn't want to leave, Diggle shaking hands & hugging every member of the front row, the sundry members of the band lapping up the applause. For me, brilliant to see such a legendary band performing such a legendary song.
Schools of Seven Bells: Wolverhampton Slade Rooms: Gig 33 Friday 20 July 2012:
After a week of stress and crap at work I woke knackered on Friday, a long day at work and not in the right frame of mind really for a gig, but luckily caffeine'd up I made the way to Wolverhampton. Made slightly more challenging by the police closing the only road I knew into the town centre I pottered through housing estates, hoping to see the metropolis ahead, which finally appeared.
Delayed I got into the venue at a trot to a jolly big doorman who stamped my hand to tell me I had missed most of the first band, luckily I had 3 songs left to enjoy of local band Silhouettes whose 3 songs were a bit of a mixed bag, but really impressive was the falsetto on the penultimate song by the guitarist / singer, which worked great with 2 sets of keyboards either side. Baldy keyboarder on the right was very much into the gig, bouncing rave stylee whilst playing and interjecting inbetween tracks to fill with a very deep voice explaining why he wasn't allowed usually to chat. Other lasting impression was the random haircut of the singer, shaved at the sides, clump of hair on top and straggly fringe. I hope the start of the set had more falsetto singing in it, as Puressence style that really stuck out.
A pint of 'wife beater' and I was feeling pretty excited about the next band, Sylver Tongue, the venue had filled up a little more, so roughly a third full to see the new incarnation of former Ash, Nightnurse, KT Tunstell band and solo performer Charlotte Hatherley take to the stage. To be fair when I read about this support to School of Seven Bells it was a no brainer to book up.
First impressions were that this was a really well put together band, they had a concept, central to this was Charlotte, hair highlighted and slicked back, red guitar slung over her back and what looked like a short fake fur cape / shawl round the shoulders, reminded me of the sorts of thing Sigue Sigue Sputnik wore (but luckily no fright mask).
She looked futuristic and launched into the first song Creatures, which my first impression was of an electronic Kate Bush, high praise indeed. The songs were rattled through, lots of asking for 'more drums, not backing!' from the band. After two or three tunes I noticed the styling on the two ladies flanking Charlotte on keyboards and bass which was a bit Blue Peter, normal attire which was enhanced with 2 clip on fringes fixed to the shoulders, not quite as rock star as Charlotte but kind of fitted in. Probably the best support band I have seen in a long time and hopefully an album will come out soon. It's the first time that I've seen a stylised band in a long long time, probably since the hives, and in this world of infinite choice it was great to see, having picked up Bowie's Ziggy Stardust LP this week, you can see that a choice in image can really last the test of time, although I'm not expecting to be holding my commemoration of this band in 40 years, but who knows..... Really brave move from Charlotte but one well worth it. Last song of the set was a real highlight. Not sure of the title but it was superb, a building up with catchy chorus intense Charlotte of keyboards and guitar. Tried looking through the Youtube vids and still none the wiser.
Onto the main event, the School of Seven Bells or SVIIB to give them their handy moniker, another band from New York turning up in the back end of nowhere looking a little shell shocked. Central members being the incredibly beautifully haired chap Benjamin Curtis (see pic above for proof) and the Egyptian Bob and ear ring sporting Alejandra Deheza. They came on to a whooping crowd, who looking round looked a proper muso audience, I felt at home, and I imagine most of those present will have come across SVIIB (I think more bands should have abbreviations like this) on 6 Music.
Songs cracked along, Alejandra combining her voice with harmonies from the keyboard player and songs building and building, when she was on guitar the blur of bangles on her right hand worked. For the hour they were on, I was pretty transfixed, songs (I think) were spread from the 3 albums to date and the set hung together well, support band Sylver Tongue had tweeted they were playing with the 'Lush' SVIIB and that's a good way to describe things, the vocals really are lush. A highlight for me was the opener for the new album Ghostory, The Night which is a cracking tune and has me bopping around on a regular basis. It was pretty difficult not to get caught up and bop in the gig and from looking around the audience, there looked to be quite a few whose default mode was not bop, myself included being caught up in the moment.
Another highlight was the Eighties feeling Scavenger, starting with a great bass drum booming, with dreamy lyrics circling with the Chorus of
to make you feel loved
to make you feel wanted
to make you feel fire
to make you feel like cracking......
This was followed by ILU from the second album, which takes a while to get going then, when its really embedded in your head it starts reinforcing the 'I want you to know that I loved you' over and over hypnotically. SVIIB are definitely a band you want on the side of good in the world, filling my mind with hypnotically evil messages would not be the way forward, as by the end of the gig I would probably have done anything Alejandra had told me.
Wrapping up the band played the again brilliant 6 minutes of Low times, another 'tune' as you may say, listening to it now again, you just can't stop moving to this band....
After what felt like no time for the encore they were off with a brief 'Thank you guys so much, sorry we haven't been here ever, this is the last one' and disappeared..........another favourite new band........BOOM!
Many thanks to whoever put this on youtube from Friday - as you can see - hypnotic, beautiful voice and far too good hair from Benjamin!
